Gordon's Life
Gordon, an Intimate Portrait. By H. E. Wortham. (Harrap. 12.s. 6d.) THE hero of Khartoum has been fortunate in most of his biographers, and there have been many. For his noble and complicated personality has attracted many historians and essayists who, in various degrees, have attempted to tell the story of his life. Mr. Wortham's book, just issued in time for the centenary of Gordon's birth, is on the whole the fullest that has yet appeared, for Gordon and the Sudan, that remarkable piece of scholarly investigation by Dr. Bernard Allen, dwells mainly on the subject suggested by the title, and Gordon, the- Sudan and Slavery, by Mr. Lierre Crabites, is similarly limited, though of great value within its scope. But Mr. Wortham's work is a full biography from the birth in Woolwich to the heroic and tragic death at Khartoum.
It is founded, as the author tells us, mainly upon Gordon's Own letters which have been fully entrusted to his hands, and the bulk of this collection is made up of some 1,600 letters written to his sister Augusta, and forming almost a diary in parts. That deeply religious sister and a Mrs. Freese, Gordon's intimate friend during his work in Gravesend, and still surviving in her hundredth year, appear to have been almost the only women whom Gordon much cared for and confided in. Another personal authority has been A. E. Hake's The Story of Chinese Gordon, which deals with his marvellous exploit in China, and was founded upon Gordon's own diary, now lost. With great care Mr. Wortham has searched out the best to be found in these former writers as well as the most characteristic passages in the letters, and the result is as fine a biography as is likely to be written of this variegated nature so full of apparent contradictions. When he was first in command in the Sudan he showed extreme tolerance towards his European staff. Everyone was free to leave if he wanted to, and, when one of his German servants left almost at once, Gordon's only comment was, " So much the better. The best servant I have ever had is myself—he always does what I like." His difficulty was to discover which was his self, for, as he wrote to his sister, he had a hundred selves. Yet his decisions were nearly always sharp, quick or " instinctive," and he was saved from the misery of hesitation. Obviously a difficult man for officials to deal with, or for writers to describe. Yet Mr. Wortham has succeeded.
H. W. NEVINSON.
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